There's been so much news from the US on bullying recently that caused these bullied kids to take their own life. It's scary how evil some kids could be.
Until recently, Sara was a target for a bully in her class. I didn't think much about Sara's complaining of a certain classmate who took liberties with deciding when they were friends and when they're not. Usually that classmate decision is based on who will do what for her. Interestingly, that classmate was then given some responsibilities which included writing down names of misbehaving students and reporting them to their teacher. And as it turns out, the days when Sara (and others in the class) who were deemed as not being her friend, these kids get reported to the discipline teacher as being "naughty" and "misbehaved".
It reached to a point where Sara started crying her eyes out about going to school. In the beginning, the husband and I thought she was just finding an excuse not to go to school because she had forgotten a homework or whatever. She's never actually told us why she'd refuse to go to school on some days. We also started noticing that she was asking for extra pocket money and when not given, made it a point to make sure she brought a sandwich to school.
So, this mother finally sat up and took notice when, in one of her crying fits refusing to go to school, Sara finally told me about this particular girl in her class who have been rotating between telling other classmates to ostracise Sara when she refused to do something bully girl wanted, to reporting Sara for something she didn't do to getting her lunch money taken away from her.
It was intervention time and I brought her to school and asked to see the class teacher. The teacher was so surprised to hear about the reasons that have led to the crying fits and promised to keep a closer eye on the two girls (yeah, the bully's a girl) and will also inform the bully's mum - who just happened to be a teacher in the same school who - guess what - is the discipline teacher.
Things seemed to improved for Sara after the chat I had with her class teacher. Sara is keeping her distance from the bully and apparently, other kids have now also come up to the class teacher to tell her the terror that reigned.
And if you thought the story ended there...guess again. While the bullying in school has stopped, it continued on facebook. OK, disclaimer - Sara has a facebook account but mostly to indulge in some harmless game and I do monitor her page closely. She only has access to it on school holidays.
So, getting back to the story, the bully starting leaving hate messages on Sara's facebook wall, such as "I hate you" etc. Because I wanted to empower Sara to learn to fight this bully directly, I've asked Sara to report back to the teacher and then remove this girl from her friend list. So it looks like that worked.
I still don't know how and why a kid could behave the way Sara's class bully behaved. It would be interesting to find out.
4 comments:
Based on what you wrote, it sounds like two reasons among possible others: a lust for power and thinking that her back was covered.
The bully knew that, with her mom being the discipline mistress, she could lie with impunity about who was on the list. The whole notion of asking a student to come up with the list in the first place is asking for trouble. A student will *always* think of him or herself as a model student, even when they're the troublemaker (watch some episodes of "The Principal's Office" on TruTV). Did the bully ever list herself as misbehaving on that list? I'm guessing the answer is "never." The class teacher probably gave that responsibility to the bully so that the teacher could save time by not having to deliver the daily report in person; did the class teacher ever review the list prior to it being sent to the discipline mistress? I'm guessing it rarely, if ever, was. The bullying was probably already being done prior to the girl being given the "responsibility" for writing the list, but the ability to bully more often (and more successfully) went up when the girl could write her own list. What a gift from the class teacher; that woman sounds like an idiot.
But the bullying itself is usually based upon a lust for power, the power being derived in many ways: I'm bigger than you, I can beat you up if you don't do (or give me) what I want; We're prettier than you are; you can't join our group because you're not as pretty as us; you're not from here and you speak with a funny accent, so you can never be one of us. (This last was one of the reasons for one girl committing suicide. She had been mocked for her accent and for being from Bosnia; as she lay in her casket, the girls who mocked her in life mocked her as they walked past her body.) It sounds like Sarah's bully wanted material "rewards" from her bullying: money and food. The real problem is that the bullying behavior was not stopped by the incident with the list (hence the Facebook bullying). This girl may need to be watched more closely as the bullying may turn to other means in order to be accomplished (e.g., physical bullying, such as pushing or tripping Sara). Have Sara keep her distance from this girl in all ways possible.
My wife has properly chastised me for having called the class teacher an "idiot." Let's just say I think this woman has made some poor judgment calls.
Salam JD. I LOL-ed at your second comment :D
But you know, the act of listing down of names of kids who misbehaved is pretty common. I think it is counter-productive. Why not reward those who behave? But hey, what do I know. I'm not a teaher and don't know how to control 30-40 kids in a class.
I continue to keep a close eye on Sara. Although she is very sociable and friendly, she is very easily intimidated. And the fact that the other kids now are starting to tell the class teacher about the bully is very helpful to Sara, too. I know the teacher said she is very surprised to hear about the bullying because "everyone seemed to get along with everyone else" when she's around. I think the key word is "when she's around", no?
Anyhow, I do have to give the teacher the credit she's due because she did fire up Sara's interest in Maths alhamdulillah :)
PS: You haven't posted Baby Aishah's pics much on your blog?
You haven't posted Baby Aishah's pics much on your blog?
True; sorry about that. I hadn't realized others outside the family were interested in her pics. I had been putting up my daughter's photos on Facebook, where there's almost 100 of my photos, plus various others of her taken by aunts and uncles. Let me know if you'd like to link up there.
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